Dipper's Labyrinth
by Fabrosi
Summary: Dipper and Mabel discover a labyrinth which extends deep into the Earth's crust. As they forge deep into the terrifying unknown, they gradually learn that you can't contend with strange things without being a little strange yourself.
1. Chapter 1: Back to the Shack

Dipper's Labyrinth

Chapter 1: Back to the Shack

_To brave the depths of horror and scale the peaks of wonder. To do battle against strange things, and in so doing, become strange myself. To seek truth in a fairy-tale kingdom. To risk life and limb looking for things no one was supposed to see. Not just to stumble into new revelations, but to knowingly stick a knife in the back of everything I thought I knew. Why else would I want to go back to Gravity Falls?_

Dipper's eyes passed lazily over the words on the page like a hawk that had already eaten its fill. A story about magic, mystery and adolescence seeped into his mind through osmosis, translated by lethargy from coherent, linear sentences into abstract globules of emotion which bounced around aimlessly inside his skull.

The day had settled into that long, comfortable limbo between the time when there was nothing left to do and the time when it became reasonable to fall asleep. The lingering summer sun refused to set; even the chirping birds sounded lackluster.

"Dipper! Come see this!" He glanced up at Mabel, befuddled—she'd been sitting at the computer for the past several minutes, and her presence had faded into background noise.

"What is it?" he asked, silently plotting various ways not to get up from his bed.

"I made a cartoon!" Mabel gestured towards her chest with a flourish. "As of now, I am officially an _artiste de l'animación._" An awkward pause transpired. "You should come see."

"Show me from there."

Mabel frowned. "You can't see it from there."

"Bring the computer over here."

"It's not a laptop."

Dipper sighed as he struggled out of the vice grip of comfort. _Planning is essential,_ he thought, _but plans are useless._ As he labored towards the computer, Mabel smiled, obviously savoring her victory.

Once he was in position, she pressed "play".

"Who are those two people supposed to be?"

"It doesn't matter. Just watch."

"Why are they talking in computer voices?"

"_Shh."_

Dipper watched as two androgynous characters with the same face and different clothes took turns reciting jokes he was sure he'd heard before. His eyes slowly wandered to Mabel, who was replying to his disappointed expression with one of her own.

"You didn't like it," she said slowly as the animation came to an end.

"Well…"

"What was wrong? Was it too pretentious? Too low-brow? Too formulaic? Too self-aware? _Tell me_ what is wrong with my _art!"_

Dipper sighed. "Well… it was kind of stilted—which is surprising, since you made it. The only thing that moved was the characters' mouths, they both have the same expression, the robot voices were annoying… I don't know, it didn't feel _alive."_

Mabel crossed her arms. "I find that to be an elitist assessment."

"I'm sure you can do better. You're great at coming up with wacky ideas."

She shook her head, ignoring him. "You have your ideas about the direction modern animation should go in, and I have mine. We may be twins, Dipper, but my vision is mine alone."

Dipper turned around, moving towards the foot of his bed. "You know what? Let's make this fair. You showed me your animation, so I'll show you mine."

Mabel raised an eyebrow as he pulled a small box out from under the bed. He carefully opened and tilted it, sliding a neat stack of note cards into his hand.

"Hand-drawn… so, you're a traditionalist. You seek to maintain the old ways, as Master Kricfalusi does. Interesting."

"Just watch."

He held out the cards towards Mabel, meticulously positioned his thumb on their edge, and began flipping. He watched her comically impassive expression melt into genuine wide eyes. She opened and closed her mouth, chewing words she wasn't quite ready to string together. As Dipper's animation neared its climax, she began to lean in, peering through the cards like they were a portal into a world stranger and more poignant than the one she knew.

As Dipper reached the last card, pulling the others away from it in his left hand, he spotted a single tear welling in her eye. She slowly lifted her gaze to meet his, her eyes expressing something almost religious, between reverence and shame. "Dipper… I had no idea your soul was so beautiful."

He smiled. "See? These things turn out better when you don't take shortcuts.

…

Later, after the afternoon's torpor had settled into night, Dipper awoke from a sleep he'd slipped into by accident. He clumsily batted a book off of his face, blinking furiously until he realized it was _supposed_ to be this dark. The only sources of light shining through the window were the moon, and—

He squinted and rubbed his eyes. Something from the ground below seemed to be flickering. _A flashlight?_ As he stumbled out of bed, the lingering inertia of his sleep struck him, forcing him to brace himself against the wall for balance.

As he reached the window, he spotted someone creeping across the Mystery Shack's front lawn with a crouched gait. The light seemed to strike the visitor at an odd angle… but where was the light coming from?

He nodded to himself as his eyes adjusted and he realized he was looking at a brightly glowing, naked humanoid with blackened, empty eye sockets and a gaping, lipless mouth. The creature squatted down, bending its knees at grotesque angles, and began sniffing the ground. It let out a soft, high-pitched trill, bobbing its head up and down and alternately sliding each of its slender hands across its misshapen face.

Dipper yawned. "All right. That can wait 'till morning." He dragged his feet back to his bed, wobbled for a second as his shins hit its edge, and then collapsed face first on top of the sheets, where he fell asleep within seconds.


	2. Chapter 2: Unauthorized Entry

Chapter 2: Unauthorized Entry

Dipper crept like a thief through the hallowed silence of too-early morning, opting to feel his way through the darkened hallways rather than turn on the lights and compromise his solitude.

He opened a cupboard and ran his fingertips across the boxes of cereal inside, trying to remember which one was which and absently wondering if they printed cereal boxes in Braille. He passed a few boxes through a shimmering moonbeam before deciding on one whose name ended in "flakes".

He measured out the crunching sound of his chewing, furtively glancing over his shoulder in between spoonfuls of nebulous flakes. Why did he feel guilty, as though he was someplace he shouldn't be? Why was he afraid to be caught eating breakfast?

A gleam of light from the window answered his question. As he squinted out towards the woods, he saw something shifting in the bushes, too distant to examine in detail but visible by the light it emitted. _Is that the same one from before? _he wondered. His chewing became even slower, almost imperceptible. It seemed unlikely that the creature would hear him from so far away, but he didn't want to take any chances.

Dipper watched the thing creep out onto the grass, moving closer to the shack at a sideways angle. It performed an odd sort of skittering crab-walk, contorting and crawling the way a spider might, with the same terrifying speed. As it left his field of view, Dipper turned to look at the next window over, where it stepped onto the driveway, leaning its head back against its shoulders, or possibly its chest.

Dipper tried to come up with a general name for whatever class of humanoid he was seeing. _Goblin? Kobold? Alien? _It occurred to him that understanding the distinctions between supernatural creatures might make them less supernatural, relatively speaking. His uncanny, glowing neighbor fell squarely into the realm of the _other_; it was an interloper, an aberration, a miscellaneus.

The miscellaneus let out intermittent chirps at varying frequencies, moving its neck folds substantially more than its lips to produce each sound. As it continued circling the Shack, Dipper moved from room to room, peeking out of each window in turn. He wondered if his old journal would have any information about it, although he'd read it from cover to cover and couldn't remember anything that quite resembled what he was seeing.

His musings were interrupted as the miscellaneus disappeared from view once again. He glanced out the next window to the left, where he saw only the totem pole standing watch, and then out the window to the right, where the trees at the forest's edge did the same. He rubbed his eyes as he turned his attention back to the center window, only to see a glowing white face, frozen in an unholy, grimacing, silent scream, mere inches from the glass.

He let out a shrill cry as he stumbled and fell backwards, eyes watering with fear. The creature cocked its head from side to side like a parrot trying to intimidate a mirror, sliding its unnaturally long fingers against the window and emitting a barely audible but thoroughly disgusting gurgling noise from deep in its throat.

Dipper covered his eyes but peered out between his fingers to see the miscellaneus slowly pressing its flat face against the glass. At this distance, he could see the scaly texture of its skin, along with the black, glistening eyes that he had mistaken for empty sockets before. The inside of the mouth was deep purple and undulating, its ridges and folds rippling like the sails of some nightmarish ship.

It continued to gurgle as Dipper scrambled away, climbing over a sofa and curling up in the dusty space behind it. "Please go away," he whispered, quaking and covering his head. "Please go away. Please go away. _Please go away."_

"Oh, okay. See you around."

Dipper looked up to see Mabel walking away, dragging her slippers across the carpet.

"I wasn't talking to you." He swallowed, trying to stop his voice from quavering. "There's this white glowing thing outside. Look out the window."

He hovered behind Mabel as squinted out into the darkness, moving her head from side to side, shifting her perspective.

"Is it in the trees or something?"

"No, it was _right_ outside. It was kissing the window or something."

"Gross. I'm looking for something pretty big, right?"

"Yeah, it was about human-sized. Like I said, it's glowing, so you should know when you see it."

"Well, I don't really… oh. _Oh._"

Dipper followed Mabel's gaze to see the miscellaneus crouched against the side of shack, gradually shrinking away in an obvious attempt to hide.

"What even is that?"

"How should I know? I'm thinking we should just call it a 'miscellaneus'."

"That's an adjective."

"Not if you leave out the 'o'_. _Then it's like 'miscellanea', but singular."

"That's not a word."

They fell quiet as the miscellaneus began to stomp on the grass, alternating between its clubbed feet, and shaking its head from side to side. It turned and dashed away towards the forest, now moving more like a gorilla than a crab. The twins stared at the patch of brush that continued to shake several seconds after thing had passed out of view, leaving no trace of itself but lingering curiosity and fear.

"Let's follow it," Dipper said finally.

"Are you _nuts?"_ asked Mabel. "That thing clearly didn't want to be our friend. Besides, it had some Mothman-level weirdness vibes going on. If we meet it out there in the woods, we'll probably end up in cocoons with our organs being slowly liquefied and sucked out!" She waggled her fingers for dramatic effect.

Dipper shook his head. "It knows where we live. As long as we're staying here, I'd prefer to know where things like that are than stay in the dark. Besides, my journal didn't have any information on it, and I intend to change that."

…

Soos held perfectly still, breathless, couched in a thick blanket on a secluded hilltop. Here was where the new day would give him its first impression; here he could glimpse the dawn naked and unprepared as she arose from her slumber.

The first rays of morning sunshine began to filter through the mountains on the horizon, orange and warm, a gentle light trickling into a cradle of dense, humming forest life. Soos propped his flashlight against a pile of books: the _Tibetan Book of the Dead_, _The Trial, White Noise._ He held a notebook out where it was well-lit, hunted down a ballpoint pen which had hidden under his leg, and began to write.

_It is in this place that I hear the birds say 'good morning' and watch the darkness say 'no more'. The cycles of nature are an endless ebb and flow, each day a microcosmic reflection of the passing of seasons, the passage of years, the rise and fall of nations. Perhaps we should weep, that we can only know so little of the majesty of creation before we cease to be. Weep, that we should be constrained by our limited physiology, compromised by our limited senses, and commanded by foolish souls who are as lost as we. Nature's splendor is nearly infinite, yet we are not. That the light should be so wondrous to be hold, and speak such sweet music to our weeping eyes—these kindnesses make it all the more bitterly cruel that the light should go out. A sunrise implies a sunset, a birth implies a death, and to enter this fantastic world is to be born a doomed fool. Why, then, must…"_

He stopped writing and clenched the pen as a rustle issued from the bushes behind him. He flicked the flashlight off with one thumb, keeping the rest of his hand and body still. As he sweated in the darkness, the rustle began to fade, and soft, wet, footsteps plodded across the dew-kissed grass at the base of the hill behind him. There was a brief pause before he heard the steps again, faster than before, rushing up the hill towards him. A knot formed in his throat; he knew there was no escaping now.

A single tear welled up in his eye. "How ironic," he whispered.

There was a soft _click_ and a light shining on his back. "Soos?"

He looked over his shoulder to see a confused pair of twins, both of which had donned backpacks and the shorter of which was holding a flashlight. He wiped profuse sweat off his brow. "Oh, it's you guys. For a second there, I thought I was going to set face to face with the clear path."

Mabel rubbed her eyes in confusion. "What?"

"I thought I was going to experience it in its reality, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum, without circumference or center."

"Soos, what are you talking about?" asked Dipper.

"I'm watching the sunrise, trying to think of deep things to say about life and death. I guess I still have some work to do, huh?"

Dipper shrugged. "Just… try saying it in less fancy words, I guess. You don't wanna reach beyond your grasp, or whatever."

Soos nodded, staring intently at the sunrise. "The story inside of me must be told plainly, without pomp or pretense. Only then can I communicate my rawest emotions."

Mabel circled around him, glancing down the hill at the surrounding trees. "You didn't happen to see a glowing white monster pass through here, did you?"

Soos shook his head. "I did not… but, deep down, aren't we all glowing white monsters?"

Dipper bit his lip. "Maybe don't write that one down."

With that, the twins set off, stepping sideways down the grassy slope and into the complete shade of the trees. Dipper led the way with his flashlight—as he swung it from side to side, Mabel followed in zigzagging steps, trying to stay as far from the darkness as possible.

She bumped into him as he stopped walking. "Dipper, why"—

"_Shh."_

She leaned around him, squinting into the darkness as she realized that the flashlight was off. Another, fainter light emanated from the other side of a log that lay in front of them. They crouched low, keeping their footsteps whisper-soft as they crept forward. Dipper wrapped his hands over the top of the log, lifting his head a few inches, then a few more, and more still until he could see…

"Blood?"

There was a small, viscous, green puddle seated upon the dirt. Mabel began reaching towards it, nearly dipping her index finger into it before Dipper smacked her hand away. "What are you doing?" he whispered. "That could be poisonous."

Mabel pouted. "It could also _not_ be."

They climbed over the log, and Dipper slowly rotated, shining the light out as far as he could in each direction. As a glint of something unusual caught his eye, he took a few steps towards it before he thought to turn the light back off.

"It's more glowing blood," he said. As he walked towards it, the light of a third puddle caught his eye.

Mabel cringed. "Looks like someone had a rough night. I wonder if"—

She stopped as a horribly familiar chirping sound filled the air. The twins huddled together, as low to the ground as possible, as they listened to something stumble awkwardly through the underbrush, occasionally letting out a shark _squawk. _As the sound grew further away, Mabel started to rise, beckoning to Dipper. He followed her towards a gap in the brambles at the edge of the clearing, towards the sound, keeping it at a distance that was audible but not suicidal.

Soon they came to another, larger clearing, where the pulsing glow of the miscellaneus made its position obvious. It glanced around in an undulating motion before arching its back and letting out an otherworldly scream, as loud and grating as it was entrancing. The sound echoed out into the forest, leaving the creature grasping its hip and mumbling angry-sounding _clucks_ to itself.

As the miscellaneus stared intently at the ground, the ongoing sunrise began to dim its glow, making it harder to see than it had been at night. Dipper had just begun to back up when he heard a rumbling sound from the clearing. The creature tensed into a half-crouch, looking ready to bolt.

A swell began near the clearing's center, the dirt pushing upwards, splitting the grass. As the rumbling grew louder, the swell lifted up higher, sending a cascade of dirt, pebbles, and skittering insects tumbling down around its apex. The miscellaneus took slow steps backwards to avoid being knocked over as a wide, weathered stone slab emerged from the dirt, sending dusty billows swirling into the air. Dipper held his breath, willing himself not to cough or sneeze. As the slab was lifted higher, it became a large archway over a pair of thick, rune-engraved stone doors, which rattled violently as they emerged from the ground.

Just as Dipper realized the size of the structure, it finished its ascent, send one last plume of dust outwards as the doors swung open, swaying slightly from their own unbalanced weight. The entire entrance bore the look of something from another time, another place. As soon as the motion had stopped, the miscellaneus leapt forward, into some darkness that was barely visible from the twins' position. A few seconds later, the ground started to shake again.

Dipper strode out into the clearing, his heart pounding. He knew that if he stopped to think about what he was doing, he might not be able do it.

"Dipper, don't! It could crush you!"

He glanced over his shoulder without slowing his pace. "Come on, Mabel!" he shouted over the rumbling. "Who knows when it might open again?"

"Exactly! You could be stuck in there forever!"

"We can dig out if we have to! Come on!"

He stopped once he had crossed the archway onto a stairway which led down into deepest darkness. "Come _on_, Mabel! It's now or never!"

He felt a twang of regret as he noticed her eyes starting to water. "Dipper, don't be stupid! Get _out_ of there!"

"No! You come in!" He braced himself to keep steady. The ceiling kept getting lower, and he tried and failed not to panic.

"Dipper, I'm not going in there! You come out!"

"No, you come in!" he ducked as the gap connecting him to the surface continued to shrink and the doors slowly squeezed towards each other.

"Come _out!"_

"Come _in!"_

"Come _out!"_

There was no more than a foot of space left. "Actually, don't come in!"

Mabel stamped her foot. "_Fine!_ Don't come out!"

"No, I mean you'll get squished if you come in!"

Mable dropped down to the ground, pressing the side of her face against the dirt where Dipper could see her wide-eyed dismay.

"Dipper, I…"

_Thud._ Just as suddenly as the motion stopped, the last of the light was gone and Dipper was surrounded by absolute silence.

"_Mabel?"_ he called out. He cringed as he realized that the miscellaneus might easily have heard him. By way of response, he heard a heavily muffled, unintelligible yell from above.

The intensity of the moment overtook him, and he slumped against the doors, running his hand through his hair. His arms were shaking, his legs felt weak, and he had no idea what was waiting for him down below, nor how quickly it could kill him.

_Well,_ he thought, _nothing left now but to find out how horrible of an idea this was._ He cupped one hand over the flashlight, turned it out with the other, and let out the tiniest amount of light he needed to see by, inching himself gradually down the stairs, towards whatever it was Gravity Falls had in store for him.


	3. Chapter 3: Scratching the Surface

_Author's note: I had the idea to sketch out a map of the labyrinth in this story on graph paper. This helps me keep the locations in the story consistent and potentially give me new ideas as the story progresses. Does anyone want me to upload scans of some of these maps as I go along? (There wouldn't be any spoilers, just places that have already been seen in the story.) Write a review to let me know. Thanks!_

Chapter 3: Scratching the Surface

Thick, musty air encased Dipper as he sidestepped down the ancient, dew-frosted staircase. He had turned off the flashlight and packed it away, opting instead to feel his way through the darkness. As he detected cushiony, scraggly moss on the wall, he moved his hands to the stairs—he had no way of knowing whether the plant life down here was poisonous. Every so often, he we would hold still and listen for signs of trouble. He thought he heard distant shuffling echoing from deep down below, but he had his back to a dead end, so he pressed on.

An acute claustrophobia settled into him, instilled by the strangeness of not seeing the walls or ceiling, and reinforced by nagging imaginings of his fate should be caught by the miscellaneus, or by some other underground denizen. A cold sweat followed him as he descended.

He slowly lowered his foot for the hundredth time, and was treated to an unexpected jolt as his foot struck stone closer than he'd expected. He crawled around, feeling for the edge of the step he was on: a foot, two feet, and then five feet. Only once he was splayed out on the floor did he realize he'd reached the bottom of the stairs. A sense of disorientation gripped him, as though he were in free-fall.

Once he'd regained his sense of balance, he shuffled over to the nearest wall, which turned out to be soft, moist soil which crumbled slightly at his touch. He fumbled with the flashlight for a moment before turning it on and shining it on the smooth, tiled floor and rocky walls in his immediate vicinity. He crept forward, keeping the beam of the flashlight pointed at the ground just a few feet in front of him. He made his way down a long, straight passage, occasionally glancing from side to side to make sure the wall was still there.

After a few minutes, the light crept up onto a wall at the end of the hallway. Dipper slowly swiveled around, scanning the wall for a door, only to find himself facing back down the hallway he'd come from. His heart pounded as he contemplated being trapped, left to waste away mired in terror and regret. Taking a deep breath, he shone the light on the floor and spotted a staircase leading further down.

He took the steps normally, no longer worried about the echoing sounds he could no longer hear. The stairs took a bend to the left, leading him into another hallway. As he treaded down it, he softened his footsteps, realizing how far the noise might travel. He kept his body level, slinking forward like a cat, tensed and alert. He wondered who had carved out these tunnels, and why. It also occurred to him that his curiosity would mean nothing if he died before finding out.

He froze suddenly as he heard a sharp _snap_ from below. Glancing down, he saw tiny, hairline cracks forming in the stone around his foot. They spread gradually, forming complex fractal patterns, almost seeming to wink at his misfortune. "No," he whispered, gritting his teeth. "No, no, no, no"—

He yelped as the ground gave way beneath him and he was left flailing through the air, grasping for any possible support, swinging his arms around in an involuntary pantomime of drowning. As his flashlight spun away from him, swinging its beam in rapid loops that mirrored his panic, his mind immediately set to torturing itself by wondering _how far?_ His frenzied imagination conjured up jagged rocks, concrete slabs, or metal spikes waiting for him below, salivating at the promise of a moment's excitement as he met his grisly fate.

_Fwoosh_. He heard a large, sudden rush of air as he landed on something spongy and slimy, which then began to warp under his weight. He curled up tight, fingers sliding against the thing's oily surface as he searched for a handhold. His stomach protested as the surface against it rotated sideways, flipping him over with a _thump_ that he was too busy feeling to hear.

He lay on his back, eyes shut tightly, for several seconds before he realized he was neither dead nor in gut-wrenching agony. The moment he started breathing again, he inhaled a heady, earthy scent, somewhere between peat and ferns on a dry day. He sat up, shook off his lingering disorientation, and realized that the ground under him was fine dirt.

His outstretched hand wandered through the intoxicating air above him, searching for whatever had broken his fall, but he quickly gave up in favor of pursuing his flashlight. It felt odd to look around in total darkness, and he found himself leaning into an awkward half-crouch as he rotated himself using his hand as a pivot. He stopped once he spotted a faint but familiar glow a few yards away, obscured by a gentle ridge of dirt.

He clambered over, stumbling as the looser patches of soil gave way, and dropped down on all fours next to his flashlight. He grabbed it and rolled over in a single, fluid motion, letting the unsteady ground guide him. Once he was securely on his back, he shone the light up at the ceiling, shivering as he realized just how far he'd fallen. The room had a high, smooth stone ceiling, with an unsightly hole at its apex. Dipper lowered the light from the hole until it landed on a humped, veiny purplish structure, supported by a bent lavender stalk.

_A giant mushroom,_ he mused. As he was examining it, the flashlight shone past it to another, smaller mushroom behind it. As he explored further, he saw glistening, blood-red caps with thick pink stalks; small lime-green caps with curved, yellowish stalks; tall, black caps perched atop stout, grayish stalks; and a panoply of other mushrooms lurking in the shadows.

He moved carefully, taking short, hesitant breaths and trying not to wonder what the spores around him might do to a human body. Squinting at the ground, he thought he saw a faint trail, about a foot wide, where the dirt had been tamped down. He stepped onto it and his carriage immediately felt more natural as the ground provided a comfortable resistance.

As he followed the trail in the direction he hoped led out, he covered his nose with his shirt. It occurred to him that this probably wouldn't protect him from anything, yet it provided him with a small sense of security. Before long, the mushrooms became smaller and sparser, leaving him with a strange sense of loneliness as they disappeared altogether. The trail dipped downwards, around a bend that obscured the path ahead.

He dropped to the ground as he heard something large scuttling around up ahead. He thought of giant beetles, of voracious rodents the size of alligators, of gnashing teeth and mandibles and sensitive, twitching noses which doomed him the moment they caught his scent.

He turned off his flashlight and bared his teeth in fear as a light shone from around the corner, wavering with a motion he recognized immediately. Suddenly, the light froze in place, and there was a soft, elongated chirp, followed by complete silence.

Dipper braced himself to face being discovered, to experience horrors beyond comprehension, to be dragged away to a fantastically grisly death, down where the sun would bear no witness. Instead, the miscellaneus shuffled away, leaving him in nearly total darkness.

As he waited for his nerves to allow him to move again, he considered turning around—but, then again, he had come here to follow these beings and learn more about them, and death might just as well lie behind him as before him. He breathed as deeply and quietly as he could, summoned all the courage he had in his sweating, quivering body, and forged onward.

…

Mabel rummaged through freshly upturned clumps of grass, tossing them over her shoulder in search of the vessel that had ferried her brother away. As she thrust her hand into the soil, she felt her fingers brush against something flat and solid. She leaned in close and kept digging to reveal the top of the buried structure. Once she'd uncovered a substantial portion of the stone surface, she jumped to her feet and began stomping on it.

"Dipper!" she shouted. "You'd _better_ not be dead down there!" As she kicked aside clumps of dirt, the visible surface area slowly grew. As time wore on, however, she began to consider how long it might take to excavate the entire structure.

She made her way out of the clearing, taking a reluctant glance over her shoulder. As she followed the trail, she struggled to remember whether it led towards the shack, or away from it. She passed a dense patch of blackberries, grabbing a handful without slowing down.

As the sun moved higher into the sky, she glimpsed something sparkling and glimmering through the brush. Wiping berry stains from her hands onto her sleeves, she ducked and forced her way through ferns and clinging brambles before emerging at a jagged, dusty precipice overlooking a large quarry.

She shielded her eyes from the sun and surveyed the rocks below, shifting her head around until she saw the sunlight catch the same mysterious something as before. She circled around and negotiated a pile of mismatched rocks, lowering herself about eight feet into the quarry proper. Clambering over a couple of boulders, she felt her arm slip just as she caught sight of another glint of light, and so she tumbled forward, reaching out and grabbing something warm and metallic as she rolled onto her back.

She sat up and examined her acquisition: a polished, silver-plated box, about the right shape and size for a handheld video game console, with a pitch-black screen and large spiral pattern where the buttons should have been. Turning it over, she noticed tiny but intricate runes carved into the back at a slant. As she dusted the thing off, it began to vibrate softly.

She yelped and dropped it on the ground. As it continued to vibrate, a high-pitched hum issued from the quarry's lowest point. Mabel picked up the device and crawled towards the source of the sound, prepared to crouch behind each rock she encountered on her way.

The hum reached a crescendo as the rocks immediately around it began to wobble, collapsing inward and sending a plume of dust into the air. Suddenly, both the sound and the vibration ceased, leaving Mabel squinting at a dark tunnel whose mouth was large enough to allow a bear passage.

She took off her backpack, zipped it open and rummaged through it until she found her flashlight. She stood over the tunnel's entrance, shining the light against its rough, rocky walls, hesitating and weighing her options even though she knew exactly what she was going to do next.

She turned and took one last look at the beautifully clear day, the sun-tipped evergreens swaying to the wind's rhythm, the gentle stirring of the forest. Breathing one last, deep breath of pine and pollen, she set foot in the tunnel, infused with the hope that she wasn't descending into her tomb.


	4. Chapter 4: The Escape

Chapter 4: The Escape

Dipper stayed close to the wall and low to the ground, accompanied by the lingering smell of giant mushrooms. He deployed his flashlight in short intervals, forming a picture of each next few steps before taking them in the dark. As a faint glow came into view up ahead, he crouched, scrambling for cover for several seconds before he realized there was no cover.

His legs shook. Several yards down the tunnel, a terrifying, glowing face peeked out of a hole in the ground. Dipper pressed himself as low to the ground as he could, wishing his heart would shut up. Those black eyes might have been looking right at him, or past him, or they might have been completely blind. It occurred to him that, shrouded in darkness as he was, a human certainly wouldn't be able to see him at this distance.

The miscellaneus stared in his direction for an agonizingly long time, holding perfectly still. Then, it lowered itself back into the hole it had emerged from, making a metallic clinking sound.

Dipper turned around and began feeling his way down the tunnel in the opposite direction. Just as he began to worry that he might get turned around, he caught a glimpse of a hole branching off to his right, just like the one the miscellaneus had disappeared into. The green glow from inside spurred him on, off towards a section of tunnel that sloped downwards.

_Why down? _he wondered, frustration boiling up in the pit of his stomach. _I'm moving further from the surface. I'm ensuring that it will take longer to get back home._ He gritted his teeth until he felt the ground level out once again, taking him forward. The tunnels reminded him of those in an ant farm, and he began to suspect that he had wandered into a nest of miscellanea.

As if to confirm his suspicion, a third terrifying glow shone onto the walls from behind him. He whipped around to see a miscellaneus, its grotesque head tilted to the side like a curious puppy's, malformed fingers gripping the rim of the hole it was clambering out of. Perhaps the most frightening thing about the creature was that it was no more than four feet away from his face.

He heard the scream pass his lips before he felt it in throat. Time seemed to slow down as he turned and ran. Surging, tingling adrenaline dragged him into the darkness, and he barely remembered to pull out his flashlight. As the light wavered nauseatingly in front of him and his lungs felt the chill constriction of overwork, he forgot whether he was running from the monster behind him, or the shrill, eye-watering screech that washed over him like an ice-cold tidal wave of pure liquid terror.

Skittering, scrabbling sounds echoed all around; his labored breathing took on a wheezy, whistling quality which harmonized with the peculiar ringing in his ears. With the addition of his pounding footsteps, it was almost as though he were listening to a song composed by his own unbridled fear. He hoped the miscellanea would be cultured enough to appreciate it.

His legs carried him onward even as the experience faded into a blur. Those awful lights came and went, winking at him as he passed one auxiliary tunnel after another. The salty scent of his fear-sweat took on a quality that was at once unfamiliar and familiar, as though it were from a past life in which he'd been a rabbit about to be eaten.

He stumbled as the walls on either side broadened, opening into a roughly dome-shaped room, centered around a squat cylindrical structure on the floor. As Dipper approached it, he slowed to the point where his brain could identify it as a well with an unusually large bucket. Once a glance over his shoulder confirmed that there were no miscellanea in eyeshot, he hoisted himself over the well's rim, thinking to hide. Only after shifting his entire weight into the bucket did he realize his terrible mistake.

He caught the merest glimpse of the well's handle beginning to rotate before he plummeted down, wrapping himself around the chain and bracing his feet against the bottom of the bucket. Unable to point the flashlight without releasing the chain, he stared wide-eyed into the abyss below, his breathing uncertain and hesitant as he braced himself to be submerged.

The bucket knocked him down with a _splash _at it struck water, quickly followed by a sharp _snap _from up above. He curled into a ball and allowed his eyes to roll into the back of his head in response to the bucket's violent rocking as something dragged it away. Once the motion had settled somewhat, he sat up and pointed the flashlight around.

The first thing that caught his eye was the chain, still falling, each link producing a separate splash as it struck the water. The top link carried a splintered hunk of wood, informing him that he'd broken the well, and more importantly, that there was now no way up.

The second thing he noticed was that the water he'd landed in had a slight current, tugging him away from the hole he'd fallen from. Turning around, he saw that his makeshift boat was approaching a shallow area where the water visibly accelerated.

_I need a paddle_. _There has to be some way I can—_

He discarded the thought as the bucket struck the shallows with a _thunk,_ followed by scraping sounds as he was dragged over it. He pushed himself up, leaned over the rim of the barrel, and reached down towards the rocky surface inches below the water. His fingers scrabbled uselessly against slippery, weathered stone for a few seconds before the current became impatient and took him on his way.

Once again, he curled up, willing the bucket not to tip over as it swung violently from side to side. _I'm in an underground river,_ he realized, _and rivers only flow downstream._ _I'm only going further down. I can't let this happen._

Gritting his teeth and swallowing his growing sense of hopelessness, he sat up and pointed the flashlight at the sides of the river. At first, the swaying of the bucket made it impossible for him to see anything of use, but he rebalanced his weight and steadied the beam, revealing the smooth, nearly vertical walls on either side of the river. Scanning further downstream, he spotted a wide, flat embankment approaching on his left.

He lifted himself up, knees shaking, lungs retroactively protesting his terror-sprint from the miscellanea. He swallowed his fear, braced himself, and leapt from the bucket just as it swung past the embankment.

His right hand plunged into the river, knocking the flashlight against the sloping rock below. As the rest of him followed, sending an icy shock through his body, he accidentally released his grip and watched in horror as the spinning, bobbing light disappeared downstream, carrying his hopes with it. He flailed and kicked his way up onto solid ground, stumbling away from the river and down onto his hands and knees, bitter tears of defeat stinging his eyes. He forced himself to keep crawling forward, knowing full well that his chances of survival had plummeted to roughly zero.

He felt his way into a narrow tunnel with a slight incline. _Up,_ he thought furiously. _That's exactly where I need to go. Keep going that way._ He shivered and clenched his hands as an acute chill set into his sopping clothes. Each breath he took echoed around him, making him aware of his exhaustion. _Go up, no matter what._

He froze as a light flickered up ahead, bobbing from around the corner. "No," he silently mouthed. "Not this time."

Struggling to his feet, he staggered towards the light with a hunched posture, preparing to pounce. If it was so necessary for him to die here, then he intended to take at least one of those monsters with him.

Once soft, steady footsteps became audible, he slowed down, shifting his weight with the utmost caution in each step, slinking silently towards the enemy. Something about the light seemed different than the ones he'd seen down in the hive: it was sharper, more focused, and only illuminated small patches of rock. He spotted large stairs hewn from the dark stone, like the ones he'd seen near the entrance.

He reached the point where his narrow tunnel opened onto the side of the stairs and crouched against the wall. As he shrank away from the light, he heard the footsteps abruptly stop. He stayed there for a long time, mentally playing out his attack.

He took a deep breath, stared at the ground and emptied his mind. Then, he tumbled out from his cover and onto the stairs, where the light immediately struck his eyes, filling his entire field of view with a dizzying glare. He charged forward, reaching towards the source of the screech that was filling his ears.

Something hard and blunt swung against his hip as he fell forward, grabbing something soft and woolen. As he shifted from the force of the blow, he felt a stinging slap across his face, but he rebalanced and bore down on his surprisingly small attacker, pinning it against the stone.

_"Get off!" _he loosened his grip at the sound of the familiar voice, only to be rewarded with another slap.

_"Ow!_... Mabel?"

She stopped struggling and he stood up, wincing as a dull pain shot through his hip. As he took a step back, she held her flashlight vertically, illuminating both of their faces without blinding him.

"Dipper!" she charged forward, tackling him with a fierce hug but quickly jumping away. "Ew, you're all wet. What happened to you?"

He shrugged. "There was a river I almost drowned in… and some monsters chasing me… and I may or may not have inhaled some deadly mushroom spores. Also, I lost my flashlight. How'd you get down here?"

She turned around, shining the flashlight across the room and revealing a towering spiral staircase, enclosed by a sturdy stone railing, leading up a vast cylindrical shaft. Mabel swung the beam to the left, showing that the stairs also extended down into the darkness, far past the tunnel he'd emerged from. "There's another entrance at the top of the stairs. Do you think we should"—

"Yes. We should leave." He watched her hesitate, glancing down the stairs again. "We're not going down there, Mabel. We are leaving _right _now."

He strode past her, squinting up as high as he could. "How far down are we?"

The light wandered up, scaling the stairs for hundreds of feet before reaching the domed ceiling, where the top stair connected to a platform extending from a small, rectangular passage. "The entrance is right through there. I found some weird gadget that opened it." He looked over his shoulder to see her reach into her backpack and pulled out something shiny and silver with an odd black screen which looked less like a surface than a tiny hole opening up into infinite darkness.

"It's kind of eerie-looking, isn't it?"

"What? I don't see how…" she trailed off. "Y'know, I didn't notice anything odd about it before, but down here, it _does_ look kinda creepy."

"Well, just put it away, I guess."

They resumed their ascent in silence. Dipper hurried ahead, eager to spend as little time underground as possible. Mabel seemed to notice, because she pointed her flashlight immediately ahead of him, steadily moving it so that he was never running into the darkness. Every minute or so he glanced down, expecting to see a miscellaneus lurking behind Mabel.

His stomach unclenched as he reached the platform where the stairs began. Inclining his head, he thought he could smell the fresh air of the forest beckoning up. He lingered at the top of the stairs and waited for Mabel to catch up with him.

"You mentioned monsters chasing you," she said as she passed him. "Were they like that white glowy thing we saw before?"

"Yeah, the miscellaneus. There's a lot more of them down there, living in tunnels."

"Do you think they made this staircase?"

He shook his head. "Their tunnels were smaller and rougher, like ants'. I think they just found this place and decided to move in."

When the first rays of sunlight reached them, Dipper broke into a run. He bounded up about sixteen stairs, shielding his eyes as they adjusted to the glorious light.

He let out a giddy laugh, spinning and dancing through the quarry. "It's still day-time! After all that, it's still light outside!" He turned to Mabel as she emerged from the tunnel. "Which way is it back to the shack?"

"There's a trail over this way. Come on."

…

It was late afternoon by the time they arrived back at the Mystery Shack. Dipper felt vaguely disappointed—his ordeal didn't feel like something that could have happened over a single day.

They stepped inside to see their Grunkle Stan glance furtively at them from the living room, where he was hunched over the table holding what looked like bits of shredded paper that had been taped back together. "Hey, kiddos," he said, covering his handiwork with his large hands. "Where've you two been?"

"Underground," said Mabel on her way up the stairs.

"I can relate. The light of day can be pretty harsh, revealing terrible secrets and whatnot."

In their room, they unpacked their backpacks. Dipper was sorting a package of mushy, waterlogged crackers when he heard Mabel stop rummaging. He looked over and saw her sitting on her bed, staring at the silver device which she had laid down on the sheets. She idly ran her hand across it, and Dipper suspected she didn't realize she was doing so. Once she noticed his gaze on her, she pushed the device away and turned her attention back to the remaining contents of her backpack.

…

Later, as the day's light began to fade, Dipper flicked on the light and resumed writing in his journal. _The miscellaneus sometimes exhibits motion and behavior characteristic of birds. When it encounters a human being, it may emit an ear-splitting screech. It is unknown whether this is a defense mechanism or a sign of hostility towards humans, though there have been cases of miscellanea showing curiosity in human houses._ As he paused to consider his deceptively plural phrasing, he heard a sharp hiss from Mabel.

"Dipper! Look outside!"

He felt mounting dread as he walked over to the window. Out at the edge of the grass, partly hidden behind the bushes, was a glowing face which seemed to stare directly at him.

Mabel ducked below the sill. "I think he's mad that I took that silver thing! Do you think we should give it back?"

Dipper shook his head grimly. "One of them was trying to get inside this morning, before you took it. I don't think giving it back would change anything."

"Then what do we do?"

"I don't know. Until we know more about these things, there's no telling what they want, or how to stop them." He narrowed his eyes at the miscellaneus, hoping to communicate the fearlessness he wished he had. "I think we need to make another trip underground."


	5. Chapter 5: Buried Truth

Chapter 5: Buried Truth

Stan trundled through maliciously thorny underbrush, cradling a vinegar-smelling iron lockbox close to his chest as though it were a precious infant. He found the gentle, blue glow of his electric lantern strangely calming, but he knew enough to stay alert.

The chirping crickets and hooting owls around him made him feel claustrophobic. "Don't judge me, nature," he hissed. "You ain't exactly squeaky clean yourself." As he paused to catch his breath and his bearings, an odd, musty odor wafted by. He pressed out into a clearing and held the lantern at arm's length, squinting into the night.

Striding forward, he encountered what looked to be the entrance to a mausoleum: a stone structure, its ornately patterned doors wide open, housing a staircase which led down farther than light could reach.

"Dead men tell no tales," muttered Stan, "and if they know what's good for 'em, they won't tell this one." He took the stairs with slow, deliberate, sideways steps, secretly hoping the dead had no concept of justice.

He became nervous after about the twentieth step—where were the tombs? Over his shoulder, the entrance looked unsettlingly distant, yet the stairs continued out of sight. He shrugged and kept moving until they ended at a long hallway.

"The further down, the better," Stan assured himself. His voice felt warbly and awkward passing over the lump in his throat. The tunnel seemed to extend indefinitely, leaving him ample time to imagine an unseen stalker behind him. His mind sculpted the grizzled, asymmetrical face of an old man with a broken nose and a jutting chin, robed in dark grey, each breath audibly shallow. The man didn't particularly resemble anyone Stan knew, but seemed like the sort who would come calling at a time like this.

He slowed down as he approached a jagged hole in the floor which exposed a vast cave below. Leaning down, he shed light on what looked to be the girthy, round caps of giant mushrooms. He let out a low whistle, sidestepped around the hole, and carried on.

Hesitance set in gradually, tugging him backwards along his way down another set of stairs. His lockbox felt heavier in his hands, its iron surface colder. As he reached another long passage, he tried to imagine the surface above his position. If he could somehow travel straight upwards, where would he end up?

Yet another stretch of stairs came to greet him, extending down from an open doorway and cluttered with splintered chunks of wood that might have been a door once. In the distance below, the stairs opened out into a wider space, whose walls remained out of the lantern's range as its light crawled across the tiled steps.

Stan froze at the sight of a massive, gleaming, black tube connected to a socket at the base of the stairs. It was well over a yard in diameter, and looked to extend upward and outward towards someplace hundreds of feet up. He wished he had a flashlight.

He crossed from the tiled floor onto a rubbery, ribbed upward slope, which led to a metallic wall curving upwards and towards him. Craning his neck, he made out a massive black rectangle high upon its face, almost like an unpowered monitor for some sort of device. As he followed the wall's curve, he discovered that it was not the back of the room, but an enormous egg-shaped structure, most of which he couldn't see.

Unease trickled into his gut. An air of titanic cruelty seemed to emanate from the thing, as if its stillness only came from meditating on what tortures it might inflict on the human that had interrupted its slumber. Stan set about imagining what lay behind its shell, but found the task too chilling.

He discovered that the back of the structure was plated with a darker metal than the front, and there was no monitor. As he hurried away, he passed another black tube, and realized it was probably connected to the ominous egg. Finally, he reached the far wall and experienced the peculiar disorientation of having nowhere to go.

With a sideways glance towards the egg, which was now too far away to see in the darkness, he tucked his lockbox under his arm and began following the wall. "If I don't find a hiding place soon," he muttered, "this puppy's going in the lake." He nodded absently at the sour irony that a puppy would, indeed, be a less incriminating thing to send to lake-bottom than what was in the box.

He moistened his chapped lips as he spotted a row of wooden planks nailed into the rough shape of a small door in the wall, with a little copper ring which Stan instinctively tugged on. The door splintered and bent slightly in the middle as it swung open, revealing a tunnel that he had to duck into.

He found himself in a cluttered nest-like room filled with scattered objects including old newspapers, lamps, a key-ring holding an unreasonable number of keys, a baseball, a carved driftwood figurine of an eyeball, several battered notebooks, a pile of rags with a distinctive indentation that marked it as a bed, a drawer that looked to have been removed from a dresser, a glass bottle full of nails, a pile of tin cans, a camera, and a singularly neat stack of photographs.

In the corner, he found a hole, less than a foot in diameter, which led down farther than his lantern could show. After one last paranoid glance over his shoulder, he reached down and dropped the box into the hole. It wasn't long before he decided that the echoing sound of it bouncing off the walls had lasted an unnervingly long time. The metallic, almost rhythmic noise started to resemble inhuman laughter, and it was almost definitely at his expense.

It faded gradually, reaching a point where he wasn't sure if he was still hearing the sound, or just remembering it. He waited for the _thunk _of it hitting the bottom of the pit, but none came. Satisfied that the box was beyond human reach, he breathed a shaky sigh of relief and set about examining the contents of the room.

He thumbed through the photographs, most of which were glaring flashes of light mingling with indiscernible edges and curves. A few showed the face of the egg through a grainy and ominous filter that made it look like a top-secret government experiment—which it might easily have been, for all Stan knew. He paused and frowned at one picture in particular.

It was a clear, centered shot of the egg, prominently displaying its monitor. On the grey-black rectangle's image, someone had scrawled numbers in red ink: _41:13:57:08._ Turning it over in his hand, he spotted the same handwriting on the back: _PRAISE THEM. PLEASE FORGIVE ME. I DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE._

He bit his lip. He flipped through the photos he's already seen, looking at the backs this time. He was met with a cascade of slanted, frantic writing:

_DID IT BREAK? YES? NO?_

_they above will be as dark as here, can't stop it, they won't help me._

_ sick sick sick can't die, someone needs to watch it sick sick sick_

_ WE ARE UNWORTHY OF THE TREASURES. DON'T BE A FOOL._

_ they found my map and burned it_

_ DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING._

_ are they still fixing it? Can't tell_

_ I hid the words away. I don't want to see them anymore._

_ I understand now. God help me._

_ They came to visit me, or to fix the machine. They seemed angry but I don't know._

_ 'Earth transformation demon Mercury ? death sun ? flower cycle'. I have more work to do._

_ The big plaque I saw might have been about something astrological. I can't write the symbols here—I think that's why they took most of my notes._

_ I'm still convinced that there are more treasures further underground. If only I still had the device, I could search for them._

_ I think I remember enough of my notes to start decoding their language. Hopefully they won't understand mine._

_Do NOT touch the machine. I think they locked me in here because I set it in motion. If you see them, run. _

_Many notes were taken away. Writing here now._

Stan heard a distant rumbling and tucked the photos into his pocket. It wouldn't do to die here of all places. On his way out towards the broken door, the words he'd just read tumbled through his mind: frantic scribbling of a man being seduced by madness, dire warnings of some nebulous fate, and—most of all—the word "treasures".


	6. Chapter 6: Inquire Below

Chapter 6: Inquire Below

The twins descended the great staircase in skittish, measured bounds, looking and listening as much as they walked. Like mice they scurried, keeping near the wall to prevent an unthinkable fall. For safety's sake, each of them had their own flashlight.

Dipper slowed down as they approached the same tunnel in the wall he'd emerged from after his underground ordeal. Mabel shone her flashlight into it as they passed, revealing an uneven dirt tunnel clearly of a different make than the staircase. His imagination (or some other unseen force) made the air feel noticeably colder the moment he'd passed the tunnel.

On his first trip, he'd more or less seen this spot as the bottom of the staircase, but it was quickly becoming clear that it was closer to the top. Unease sifted through his joints, so he allowed Mabel to pass him and forge ahead. He tried to determine if the stairs' spirals were growing smaller, closing in towards a single point, but instead he discovered an almost imperceptible slant to wall that made each loop the same size. It seemed entirely possible that their descent might last forever.

"Hold on a second," said Mabel, kneeling to scoop an errant stone off the ground. She reached carefully over the edge of the stairs, almost lying down, and dropped it. Dipper followed it with his flashlight until it was out of view, and then looked at Mabel.

_ Crack._ It sounded like a distant, solemn gunshot and left Dipper with the mental image of the rock exploding into a fine dust as it struck the ground. He wasn't sure if it worked that way, yet he found it hard to believe anything else had happened.

"How long was that? Five seconds, maybe?"

"Yeah, something like that."

Dipper thought of the solid, impenetrable rock that surrounded them. If their way up was lost—if a section of staircase behind them collapsed, for instance—they would be left to starve, or fall prey to an even worse fate at the hands of creatures light was never meant to illuminate.

Something tingled at the edge of Dipper's ears, teasing him until he was sure he was hearing it. He moved closer to Mabel.

"Do you hear a humming sound?"

She stood still. "I think so. It sounds really close… is it my phone?" She took off her backpack, set it down, and fumbled through it before pulling out the dread-inducing silver something.

She stared at it for a moment, mouth agape. Then, she placed it to her ear with a tentative "Hello?" As it hummed louder, she recoiled from it, holding it as far from her face as she could.

"Who's it for?" asked Dipper.

"Not human ears, that's for sure."

The lower they went, the louder the humming became. Dipper felt a twinge of alarm as he noticed Mabel frantically passing the device from one hand to the other.

"Is it heating up?"

"No, I just… don't like touching it." She retracted her hands into the sleeves of her sweater and held the device through the wool. As Dipper tried to estimate how far they were from the bottom, he spotted a faintly glowing panel on the wall several yards down. Mabel halted as her flashlight's beam mingled with Dipper's on the panel.

After enduring several seconds of silent staring, the wall made no move, so Dipper and Mabel started creeping towards it. Their approach seemed to make it brighter and the buzzing louder. Dipper held back as Mabel stepped directly in front of the glow, squinting into it. Just as he realized that it was the size and shape of a doorway, it vanished, leaving a door-shaped gap in its place.

Dipper followed Mabel through, taking care to point his light wherever hers wasn't. They made their way down a hallway so long that it had a dizzyingly small vanishing point. The phrase _tunnel vision_ fluttered through Dipper's head, although he wasn't sure if it was applicable.

"Whoever made that hidden door was either trying keep people out, or keep something in," said Dipper. "We need to be careful." Mabel didn't say anything, but he thought he heard her roll her eyes.

Eventually, the tunnel opened onto a stone balcony overlooking a much larger room on the right. Dipper shone his light down, showing the tiled floor some thirty yards below. He scanned the vast, empty space until he spotted a metal cylindrical structure with roughly the diameter of a circus tent, narrowing at the top into a smaller pillar that extended up into the ceiling. It seemed to be roughly in the room's center.

Both lights crawled across the cylinder as the twins followed the balcony to a set of stairs. On their way to the floor below, the same humming from before struck up. Mabel held the device out with her sleeve, low to the ground like a metal detector.

Dipper instinctively crouched behind her as she drew closer to the central structure, glancing from side to side as she moved forward. As softly as they walked, the echoes from their footsteps resonated across the room, giving Dipper a mental image of an empty opera house.

Mabel rounded the cylinder, illuminating a small, flat face with a darkened, rectangular display set about a foot over her line of sight. The humming became muffled as Mabel slid the device into her pocket. "It looks like some kind of console," said Dipper. "You probably shouldn't touch it." Mabel bit her lip and craned her head from side to side, examining the runic carvings below the display screen. "It might be useful."

"Yes, or it might kill us. We shouldn't mess around with something we don't understand."

"But how are we supposed to understand it without messing around with it?"

Dipper pulled a notebook and a pen out of his backpack. "Well, we could try drawing everything of interest on here, and trying to make sense of it later." He pocketed his flashlight, propped the notebook against the side of the cylinder, and began copying down the symbols while Mabel shone a light on them.

While his gaze was on his notebook, Mabel's light wandered absentmindedly to the left. "Do you see that?"

Dipper squinted at the spot she'd targeted. At the far end of the room was some sort of indistinct shelf, organ, or shrine—he couldn't decide at this distance.

"Huh. Alright, how about you go check that out while I copy the rest of these runes?"

Mabel narrowed her eyes at his notebook, prompting him to tug it slightly away. "I'm not too sure you have the handwriting skills for this job. How about I take over and you go check that thing out?"

He shrugged and handed her the notebook and pen. On his way across the room, the object of his interest resolved into what looked like two hefty clay tablets, framed with reddish stone, all in the rough shape of a bulletin board.

First, he focused on the left tablet, engraved with the same symbols he'd seen on the device. He examined them from top to bottom, taking special note of those which seemed the most common. His attention wandered briefly to the right tablet before he did a double-take and looked at it properly.

"English," he whispered to himself. The tablet read:

_HUMAN:_

If ever life on Earth should become unlivable, activate this machine to bring blessed death to the surface-dwellers.

As his wide eyes crossed the last word, he heard a rumbling, whirring, electrical sound stirring behind him. He slowly turned around, making his way back in what felt like slow-motion. The sound quickly built up into a deafening pitch as a brilliant blue glow infused hundreds of thin vertical conduits along the cylinder's perimeter. Dipper broke into a run, looking up in confused horror as a massive flash of light shot from the cylinder's base up into the ceiling with a distinctly alien zapping sound.

…

Faint, quivering arcs of light coursed through the metallic, tentacle-like cables fixed to the ground. Stan backed away from the nearest one, gritting his teeth and hoping he wouldn't be electrocuted. As sparks shot into the egg, a series of runes flashed across its massive display, too quickly for him to read even if he were a native speaker. The sound of something spinning, creaking and crackling issued from inside the egg, making Stan dizzy.

"That better not be you, karma! Coming back down here took courage, not just greed!" He was bombarded by what sounded like thousands of beeps and whistles from the machine, at as many different pitches. "I've learned my lesson, you hear me? I don't care about the treasure anymore!"

Rather than wait for a response, he made a mad dash for the madman's nest, clambering into it and tumbling directly into a pile of rags. He turned around to peek out at the unearthly spectacle still unfolding.

"Those are some fireworks," he muttered. "I hope the shmuck who lived here wasn't too far gone to appreciate what he saw."

…

Far more jarring than the explosion of light and rumbling was the moment when it all stopped, leaving Dipper alone with the sound of his own unsteady panting and the bobbing flashlight beam.

"Mabel! _Mabel!"_

"…Yeah?"

He followed her voice around to the face of the machine. Once he'd seen her in one piece, he put his hands on his knees and caught his breath.

She shuffled her feet sheepishly. "So… what did you find over there?"

He lifted his head in time to see her avoiding his eyes. "What did you do?"

"Answer my question first."

He looked at the console and saw that the runes still held a faint bluish glow. "Mabel… you better not have turned on the machine."

"Well… hypothetically speaking, how bad would it be if I did?"

Dipper's knees started to tremble.

"I mean, how do we define turning it on? It's off now, isn't it?"

_"What did you do?"_

"I used the device on it!" She frantically gestured towards a reddish square to the left of the runes on the console. "I held it really close to this thing, just to see what would happen, and it turned green, so I pulled it away and then it turned red, and I figured, 'Oh, red, that must mean I did something wrong, right?' So then I put the device _back_ near this square, and as soon as I touched the front of it to the square there was this electrical sound, and"—

"Mabel!"

"I'm sorry, okay? What's so bad about this machine, anyway?!"

"It's a doomsday device! It was built to wipe out all life on the Earth's surface!"

"That's pretty bad."

_"I know!"_ Dipper racked his brain. "Maybe… maybe it didn't work. We'll go back up to the entrance and see how things look."

Mabel reached into her backpack and withdrew her cell phone. "We don't need to wait that long." As soon as she flipped it open, her shoulders visibly relaxed. "I still have bars. Unless some cave-dwellers built an underground cell phone tower, things are probably okay up there… right?"

On their way back, they encountered another pair of tablets against the stairs leading from the balcony. This time, Dipper immediately shone his light against the one on the right:

_HUMAN:_

_ Anyone with question or concerns should inquire below._


End file.
